Top 5 Employers in Tennessee: Which Companies Have the Most Jobs?

The largest employers in Tennessee hail from Nashville, Kingsport, Smyrna and Spring Hill, giving residents — or those interested in becoming Tennesseans –— some solid options on where to settle down.

Vanderbilt and its connected hospitals take the top spot, but several manufacturers muscle into the top five, as well and all are located within 50 miles of Nashville, making Middle Tennessee the state's most booming territory.

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Here are are the top five employers in Tennessee:

1. Vanderbilt University and Hospitals

With a campus for about 13,000 students among 10 schools, Vanderbilt University employs nearly double that many people. When combined with its association with Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Vanderbilt Children's Hospital, Vanderbilt helps employ nearly 60,000 Nashville area residents.

2. Eastman Chemical Co.

According to their website, "Eastman manufactures chemicals, fibers and plastics materials which are used by our customers as key ingredients to make the products that you use every day." This equates to about 14,000 jobs filled by presumably happy employees as Eastman was honored with a Glassdoor Employee’s Choice Award as one of the best places to work in 2015, which was determined by the quality, quantity and consistency of employees reviews left on the Glassdoor review website.

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3. Nissan North America Inc.

This Nissan manufacturing assembly plant in Smyrna, Tennessee, is located just 23 miles from Nissan's company headquarters in Franklin, Tennessee. About 6,500 jobs ranks Nissan's payroll the third largest among employers in Tennessee and together they manufacture over "550,000 vehicles and represent a capital investment of $2.5 billion," as stated on their corporate website. They produce six cars for Nissan: Altima, Maxima, Xterra, Frontier, Pathfinder and Infiniti JX.

4. GM Spring Hill Plant

Nissan isn't the only automotive operation in Tennessee: GM's Spring Hill Plant employs over 5,000 people. In 2014, General Motors Co. invested $185 million into the facility so they could "make a new generation of small gas engines to power some of its bestselling small cars and crossovers," according to the LA Times.

5. M*Modal

Founded in 2001, M*Modal provides conversational documentation services targeted to the medical industry. They serve "hospitals, medical clinics, and medical transcription companies representing a transaction volume of more than 400 million dictation minutes a year," according to their LinkedIn profile.

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